November 09, 2020
Interesting Things on the Internet: November 9th 2020 Edition
- A Total Fiasco. George Monbiot lays out how little interest there is from anyone in charge in making the Test and Trace programme work. "£12bn is more than the entire general practice budget. The total NHS capital spending budget for buildings and equipment is just £7bn. To provide all the children in need with free meals during school holidays between now and next summer term, which the government has dismissed as too expensive, is likely to cost about £120m: in other words, just 1% of the test and trace budget.". We should be working out how to migrate to a system that works, senior people—at least Dido Harding, probably also Matt Hancock—should resign, we should be enacting whatever clauses there are in the contract to retrieve the £12bn from Serco and preferably fine them more. We need to move away from the culture of plausible deniability and blame avoidance and giving people the benefit of the doubt because they've designed a system to make it unclear who is really at fault. We need to start holding people responsible for their failings. Maybe Hancock and Harding and Serco are just unlucky to be the ones left standing when the music stops, but even the worst making-an-example of them won't be as bad as the multitude of deaths that their inability to do their job properly has cost.
- 30 things I’ve learned in 30 years.
- LRB: Dark Emotions. An interesting history of the Women's Liberation Movement. Reminds me of some of the experienced and energising activists I met at Activism By the Numbers, and made me think about the work and factions and solidarity in the Maker Movement. So much experience and knowledge in previous forward steps? How do we find and pick up the batons and lessons? How do we help the next generation expand the beachhead in the directions that interest them?
- I revisited Brian Eno's John Peel Lecture. Fantastic thoughts on art, culture, UBI and open source.
This blog post is on the personal blog of Adrian McEwen. If you want to explore the site a bit further, it might be worth having a look at the most recent entries or look through the archives or categories over on the left.
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